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BMTC Meeting Update - Need innovative ideas!
Written By Rithesh - 2 April, 2009
Bangalore BMTC BBMP Praja Bus BMLTA Volvo Meeting Action public transport
Today, a small team of Praja members interacted with Traffic Team at BMTC headed by the CTM(O). Following are the minutes of the meeting:
The agenda was to look at ways to popularize and increase the ridership of the Volvo services. A two way approach was suggested -
- To provide quality information to the current users
- Encourage private vehicle users to switch to Volvo services (attract new customers)
Some of the suggestions were -
- To upgrade/update the BMTC website.
- Provide a section dedicated to Volvo services, detailing all the routes and time schedules.
- Use of "Moving Maps" to dynamically map buses on to maps - once all buses are fitted with GPS tracking devices.
- Re-introduction of YelliEdira service.
- Use FM radio to popularize services - organize weekly/daily contests based on Volvo routes.
- Advertising campaigns at major IT hubs/companies - MG road/Electronic City/Whitefield (Will need the help of Praja members to help co-ordinate these campaigns).
- Putting up Volvo bus fares/routes and time tables at all bus stands.
- Once BMTC volvo website is updated, an email campaign would be started. Assistance from civic groups like Hasiru Husiru, CAF and others along with Praja will be needed to spread the reach.
- Actively sort feedback from customers and work on them.
Feedback collection mechanisms that were suggested -
- Phone based feedback (a dedicated line to be operated by BMTC to record customer feedback - could be an automated recording system).
- SMS based feedback (customers can send SMS to specified numbers with suggestions). In both Phone based and SMS based solutions, the contact numbers could be widely advertised within the buses for easy accessibility.
- Feedback forms asking specific questions within Volvo buses and popular malls (discount coupons could be provided to encourage people to use the forms).
- Feedback section on BMTC website.
Other Miscellaneous issues that were discussed at the meeting -
- Kendra Sarige (HOHO) service routes have been changed - updated routes to be put up on BMTC site shortly.
- Introduction of high parking fee to discourage use of private vehicles.
- Need for congestion taxes and dedicated bus lanes.
- Fleet expansion (currently there are 310 Volvo buses, 200 more will be inducted in the next one year).
- Need for BMLTA.
- Delays in the formulation of BMLTA act.
- Inter department co-ordination problems - between BBMP and BMTC.
- BBMP owns all bus shelters in Bangalore. Though BMTC has requested for more than 3000 bus stands, BBMP is progressing very slowly. New bus stands are being introduced only in high visibility locations (advertising benefits) and others areas are being ignored by BBMP.
- The advertising rights in bus shelters completely owned by BBMP. Though a plan was put forward to BMTC to display live real time bus schedules/arrival times on LED/LCD panels at bus stands, the plan had to be shelved because, BMTC didnt have the rights to display such panels at the bus stands.
What BMTC expects from the general public and Praja -
- General ideas on how to popularize public transport in general and Volvo services in particular.
- How to encourage non IT crowd to use Volvo services.
- Better ideas for advertising - please add on to the above suggestions.
- Help in advertising campaigns (will need coordinator to at large companies and IT parks to facilitate campaigns).
- Ideas on Map based passenger information systems.
-
Feedback on routes - route rationalization and costing are important issues that they are looking into, but their current priority is to increase ridership and make the service self sustaining.
- Public pressure on BBMP to allocate advertising real estate at bus stops to BMTC and for construction of bus stands and bus bays.
Praja members please put on your thinking caps and suggest ideas to popularize Volvo services and increase their ridership. The next task would be to engage in route ratinalization and costing (but these are secondary at the moment).
BBMP engagement managers please raise the BBMP specific issues listed about with the BBMP authorities.
Hence forth such meeting will be announced publicly on Praja and anyone interested can join. Due to lack of time and co-ordination issues the meeting was a closed one.
COMMENTS
nl.srinivas - 3 April, 2009 - 05:20
Thanks for clarifying things. Sure I am willing to involve myself in this. Will PM on of the guys involved in this project.
PS: Sorry for posting empty messages accidentally.
kbsyed61 - 2 April, 2009 - 03:35
Manjari, Sudheendra and BMTC EM team,
Great going. Really appreciates your efforts in organizing thsi meeting at very short time and making it a success. Also thanks for posting the detailed meeting minutes. Now the ball is in Praja's court and it is now our duty to respond to the BMTC's call.
To take this task forward, pls call a PRAJA meeting (perhaps online) and formalize some action items that Praja members can take up.
Prajagale, pls post all your innovative ideas and pls do join the Praja BMTC team to showcase the great work that Praja members have been doing since its online presence.
navshot - 2 April, 2009 - 08:36
Rithesh,
Please don't think I'm trying to discourage your great initiative, but I don't understand the intention behind this drive. Are you trying to popularize Volvo? Why? I think we should spend our efforts to popularize public transport in general. If they are not able to make money out of Volvo, then that's a different case - basically they procured more Volvos than required. They weren't being smart, right?
Getting the basics right and then improving awareness of public transport is the right thing to do. There are no short cuts.
Nevertheless, here are some of the thoughts putting myself into the shoes of general public and IT crowd:
1. I don't care if its a Volvo or Tata or xyz
2. The bus stops should be accessible by walk from places I start/visit - eg: 500 mts/5 mins from my home/office
3. Ideally not more than 1 hop (though I'm ok with 2)
4. Total wait for bus at the stops should not be more than 10 mins - basically frequency of less than 5 mins
5. Buses should not be crowded - ideally one should get a seat, but I'm ok if I have to stand (but not pushed around by the crowd)
6. Buses should have reasonable cleanliness (this is usually not a problem in BMTC)
7. I should be able to cover the distance at 20km/hr., end to end within the city limits today and maybe with a vision of improving it to 25km/hr (30 maybe a long term goal). Ofcourse, this last point is not an actionable item only for BMTC - this is more like BRT and such.
-- navshot
kbsyed61 - 2 April, 2009 - 11:42
navshot,
The end objective is to push for better Public transport and that needs lot of improvements on its various supporting infrastructure that you have mentioned. This engagement with BMTC is an window of opportunity to work with BMTC and form a relationship to work for the greater objective. Popularizing Volvo is a kind of pushing for more PT ridership.
Appreciate your comments. All the Praja initiatives are open to all and the very fact that these are posted on public domain are for greater audience and their participation. Please join the team and Praja definitely needs lot of help for its various initiatives including BMTC. Pls PM manjari, sudheendra or ritesh for further information.
Regarding the routing and scheduling, yes, the existing structure is not the right one for today's needs. There have been lot of suggestions, in fact some with concrete proposals. I am sure Praja BMTC EM team would take this up with BMTC and work on to ensure that every locality in the B'lore have a reasonable PT connectivity. But this needs lot of efforts, patience like a TEST MATCH.
my observations (from the meeting)
murali772 - 3 April, 2009 - 10:48
It is after a lot of deliberations that I have decided to put these thoughts down. I felt I'll not be true to my own conscience if I did not do it.
The meeting was supposed to be a brain-storming session as to how to increase the rider-ship in the city VOLVO services, that is excluding the airport (Vayu-Vajra) services, which is bleeding them heavily (They appear to be pretty smug in the belief that the Vayu-Vajra services are doing well currently, whereas I would think thay are also bleeding, though may be a little lesser than the city services). And, with the numbers going up to 310 as of now , and another 200 more to be added in the course the next one year, there is a near panic situation now.
Added to that perhaps are the poor return on the investments made in the newly built TTMC's, and the fiancial commitments made on the upcoming TTMC's. The returns on the investments made in the upcoming TTMC's are going to be even poorer with the down-turn in the economy. As to their utility for the commuters is another sad story, altogether.
Having been closely associated with the BMTC, particularly with the city VOLVO services, both in my capacity as the co-Chairman of the CCTF and as the person who co-ordinated the implementation of the "Yelli Iddira?"(Yi) service, when I started with what appeared to me as the obvious suggestion of merging these with the BIG-10 services (say every 3rd or 5th as a VOLVO service), the newly appointed 'technical adviser'(TA - a 'she'), surprisingly ruled that out totally saying more or less that that was Prof Ashwin Mahesh's baby, and she had nothing to do with it, atleast till the elections were over. I am still to figure that out.
Further, she went on to add that the Kendra Saarige'(KS) has been removed from Prof AM's team's purview, and is now directly in the hands of the Chief Traffic Manager, Operations (CTMO). The day I had read in the papers that the KS route was being enlarged to cover Kempe Gowda station (KGS) and Shantinagar TTMC, I had called up AM and expressed my reservations. He tried to justify it, but I could discern a lack of conviction in his speech, leaving me with the impression that something was amiss. Now, it all seems to fall in place.
Given the set of circumstances, I then suggested that Yi was the simplest and most effective (including cost-wise) option. I invited TA to take a look at the site, which had many user friendly features, including for feedback.
The talk then went on to all kinds of esoteric solutions involving using google etc, which in my opinion is all just overkill.
We were then ushered into the CTMO's office. Ritesh summarised the earlier discussions for the benefit of CTMO, and laid out some kind of an plan of action, including some tasks for the PRAJA team. My trying to say that what was needed was plain information, which can be comprehensively achieved through Yi, and a bit of publicity of that, didn't seem to find favour with the rest, and I piped down.
Thereafter, the CTMO went on to elaborate on how KS was an utter failure, because of which they had to intervene and take charge, further confirming my belief that AM is on his way out, pretty soon. I tried to say that that was possibly where publicity was required, and the failure was largely because of the lack of it. Some heads nodded in appreciation, but not with much conviction.
The sad part is that Prof AM is, in addition, going to be burdened with the blame of running down the BMTC. The hazards of providing pro-bono services to government agencies are showing up once again. But, lessons seldom seem to be learnt.
The CTMO and his team members then went on to their rants over BBMP. I then asked the TA as to what she can tell about what was happening at the BMLTA, where she was working earlier. All she chose to say was that she had absolutely no work there, whereas after joining BMTC, she had been flooded with all kinds of work, which she finds quite exciting.
When Naveen went on ask how come the BMTC web-site, which had originally been conceived very well, is generally seen to be un-updated, the CTMO turned to one of his assistants with a "baega maad-ree", explaining away generally that the tender had expired and they needed to re-tender it. The assistant nodded his head, none too enthusiastically, though.
The only positive take home as far as I was concerned was the acknowledgement of the CTMO team members that they had indeed gone through Naveen's submission (on East Bangalore
feeder services?), and that they found it interesting, and that they will revert to Naveen in the matter in a few days. That's a certain improvement from the days when the computer was just a decoration on the CTMO's table.
Well, all in all, I think it's all going to happen pretty soon - what I have indeed been more or less hoping for, namely, collapse of BMTC. Because, as long as they 'claim' to be running on profit, they seem to enjoy a free hand to splurge on fanciful VOLVO's and TTMC's. With it going to become increasingly difficult to cover up losses any longer, because of their sheer quantum, I think the government will soon be forced to review the whole approach. And, if by then, the likes of Capt Gopinath (supported by a PIL by Muralidhar Rao) queer the pitch for participation by the private sector, perhaps there can be light at the end of the dark tunnel.
Muralidhar Rao
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